You spend years wishing your parents would get off your back, only to realise they’re the only ones who ever really had your back —Anonymous

To a child while growing up, parents represent all that strength stands for. The first realisation that age has caught up with them to turn them frail is quite a jolt.(Images Bazaar)

Of the negative emotions that rob us of calmness from time to time, ‘guilt’ would rank quite up there. The feeling of having wronged someone can sap inner strength and confidence rather badly, and it’s only worse if that someone happens to be a parent who is aging towards ill-health, by the day. I’d tell you why I’m suddenly talking about this serious, yet pertinent stress this week. It started with a friend’s Facebook post. He mulled over the guilt of pursuing a career in a fast-paced metro over being with his retired parents who live in a smaller town. My first impulse was to feel sympathy at him being the only child to his aging parents, and hence the only one responsible for taking care of them.

But, one look at how people related with his post and I realised that this stress is all-pervasive. You could be one among the many children, you could be a son or a daughter, you could be living with or away from them — at some point in life, the guilt of not doing enough for parents is still bound to strike. To a child while growing up, parents represent all that strength stands for. They mostly are the heroes of your childhood journey. The first realisation that age has caught up with the same two people to turn them frail and weak is quite a jolt. Adding to the declining health mostly is the increased gap between their thought pattern and yours.

“I start everyday promising to myself that I will spend time talking to my dad. But he has turned cranky and irritable because of his health problems. He’s forever critical of the way I’m living my life. We always end up arguing, and my guilt the next day is even worse,” says a colleague. Hmm. Toh kya karein?

Firangs have a fancy name for this condition — caregiver’s stress. But their stress is mostly about whether or not to have their aged parents admitted to a nursing home or a senior citizens’ home. Thankfully, our value system allows for a much deeper emotional bond, and most of us would place the comfort of parents before our own. Despite this, the stress of not quite being there with them doesn’t go. Now frankly, being a guilty party myself, I didn’t quite have a grip on this calmness trick.

So I decided to ask, well, the aged parents of some of those friends who keep cribbing about this guilt of not doing enough for their parents. Their answers turned out to be quite simple, as I realised that most parents think quite opposite to how we think they think. Confused? Here are a few nuggets of wisdom I got from people who made us. Quoting them as is… unedited! This was so much fun.

Surprisingly, many parents think quite opposite to how we think they think:

1. “Why should my son feel guilty about my bad health? Getting old is a natural process. He did not cause it.”

4. “Rather than wasting time on thinking about my health, she should take care of her own health. Bad eating habits and work-pressure all the time. Her kids will have a much worse time when she grows old!”

5. “I have my own life here. I go to the club every evening.”

6. “He keeps telling us to come and live with him. But we hate Delhi because of the pollution. It’s not his fault, why should he feel bad?”

7. “I tried living with her. Everyday we would get into some argument. She thinks my age has made me lose my mind.”

8. “Tell him to find a partner and get settled. We have enough savings to take care of ourselves. We are not dependant.”

9. “She has her own family to take care of. Aajkal parents interfere nah hi karein toh achha. I don’t want my everyday problems to disturb her family life.”

10. “Us se zyada toh uske bachchey pyaar se bolte hain mujh se.”

11. “This town has no career growth for him. Bombay mein he can do much better. He will feel frustrated if he settles here. Haan, he must visit every 2-3 months. Abhi toh woh bhi nahi karta.”

12. “Mujhe toh uski health ki zyada chinta hai. Kabhi khaana time se nahi khaata. If I see him happy and healthy, half of my health problems will be gone.”

18. “He never told me he feels any guilt about me. In fact he hasn’t called in the last 7 days.”

19. “Humne toh ab jaana hi hai. We are counting days. If we see them happy, it will make it easier for us to pass these days. Tell him to just stay happy, jahan bhi rahe. We don’t want anything else.”

20 “Guilty? Nalayak dramabaaz!”

Sonal Kalra is planning to take some time off and do a check on the old-age homes in the city. For herself. Mail her at sonal.kalra@hindustantimes.com, facebook.com/sonalkalraofficial. Follow on Twitter @sonalkalra

On readers’ request, this is a re-run of a previously published column by the author.